The film was released in United States theaters on June 11, 1982, and grossed $15 million against a production budget of $11 million, a far cry from its predecessor's $132 million domestic box office. Despite breakthrough roles for Pfeiffer, Adrian Zmed, and Christopher McDonald, the film received mostly negative reviews from critics. Despite this, Grease 2 maintains a devoted fan base decades after its release.[3]
Plot
It is 1961, two years after the events of the prior film, and the first day of school has arrived ("Alma Mater" from the original stage musical). Principal McGee and her secretary, Blanche, react as the students—including the laid-back, ruffian T-Birds, and their trendy, “bad-girl” counterparts, the Pink Ladies—arrive at high school ("Back to School Again"). The Pink Ladies are now led by Stephanie Zinone, who feels she has "outgrown" her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Johnny Nogerelli, the arrogant, chauvinistic (and rather immature) bully leader of the motorcycle-riding T-Birds.
A new arrival comes in the form of clean-cut British student Michael Carrington (a cousin of Sandy Olsson from the previous film). He is introduced to the school atmosphere by former Pink Lady Frenchy, who agreed to help show Michael around. Frenchy has returned to Rydell to obtain her diploma so she can start her own cosmetics company (as preluded with “Beauty School Dropout” in the previous film). Michael eventually meets Stephanie, and quickly becomes smitten with her.
At the local bowling alley, a game ("Score Tonight") turns sour from the animosity between Johnny and Stephanie. Stephanie retaliates by kissing the next man who walks in the door, who happens to be Michael. Bemused by this unexpected kiss, Michael falls in love with Stephanie. He asks her out, but learns she has a very specific vision of her ideal man ("Cool Rider"). After realizing how he can win her affection, Michael gets to work on acquiring a motorcycle. Michael begins to covertly accept payments from the T-Birds to write their term papers and uses the cash to buy a motorcycle. Substitute teacher Mr. Stuart leads a rousing biology lesson ("Reproduction").
A rival gang called the Cycle Lords (including members of the defunct Scorpions), led by Leo Balmudo, surprises the T-Birds at the bowling alley. Before a fight ensues, a lone, mysterious “Cool Rider” biker appears (actually Michael, in disguise), defeats the enemy gang, and disappears into the night ("Who's That Guy?"). Stephanie is fascinated with this stranger. Meanwhile, T-Bird Louis attempts to trick his sweetheart, Pink Lady Sharon, into losing her virginity to him by taking her to a fallout shelter and faking a nuclear attack ("Let's Do It for Our Country").
The next evening while working at a gas station/auto garage, Stephanie is surprised again by the Cool Rider, and they enjoy a romantic twilight motorcycle ride, which includes a kiss. Just as Michael is about to reveal his identity, they are interrupted by the arrival of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies. Before Michael departs, he tells Stephanie that he will see her at the school talent show. Johnny, enraged by Stephanie's new romance, threatens to fight the Cool Rider if he sees him with her again. The Pink Ladies walk away haughtily, but this has little effect on the T-Birds' self-confidence ("Prowlin'").
At school, Stephanie's poor grades in English lead her to accept Michael's offer of help. Johnny, upon seeing them together in a discussion, demands that Stephanie quit the Pink Ladies to preserve his honor. Although still enchanted by the mysterious Cool Rider, interactions with Michael reveal that she has become romantically interested in him now, as well. Michael ponders over the continuing charade he is putting on for Stephanie ("Charades").
At the talent show, Stephanie and the Cool Rider meet up but are abruptly ambushed by the T-Birds, who pursue Michael on their respective motorcycles, with Stephanie, Sharon, Paulette, and Rhonda following in a car. They chase him to a construction site which conceals a deadly drop, and the biker's absence suggests that he has gone over the edge and perished, leaving Stephanie heartbroken and inconsolable. Johnny and his T-Birds remove the competing Preptones – preppie boys – by tying them to a shower pole in the boys' locker room and drenching them. During the Pink Ladies' performance in the talent show ("Girl for All Seasons"), Stephanie enters a dreamlike, fantasy world, where she is reunited with her mystery biker ("(Love Will) Turn Back the Hands of Time"). She is named winner of the contest, and crowned the Queen of the upcoming graduation luau; likewise, Johnny is hailed as King for his performance of "Prowlin'", along with his fellow T-Birds.
The school year ends with the luau ("Rock-a-Hula Luau (Summer Is Coming)"), during which the Cycle Lords appear and begin to disrupt the celebration. The Cool Rider then reappears, defeats the Cycle Lords again, and reveals his true identity as Michael. Initially shocked, Johnny gives him a T-Birds jacket, officially welcoming him into the gang, and Stephanie is delighted that she can now be with him. Michael and Stephanie share a passionate kiss, and he whispers that he loves her. All the couples pair-off happily, as the graduating class sings ("We'll Be Together"). The credits start rolling in yearbook-style, as in the original film ("Back to School Again").
Janet Jones as the girl who missed her last two periods (uncredited)
William N. Clark as Cycle Salvage Yard Manager (uncredited) – also was a cameraman
Aurelio Padrón as Boy Greaser
John Robert Garrett as Boy Greaser (Bubba in Grease)
Helena Andreyko as Girl Greaser (Trix in Grease)
Dennis Daniels as Boy Greaser (Bart in Grease)
Vicki Hunter as Girl Greaser
Sandra Gray as Girl Greaser (Big G. in Grease)
John Allee as student with basketball (Calhoun: "We'll put high-heels on your sneakers and we'll make you a center!")
Michael David Eilert as Boy Greaser (uncredited)
Bill Baker as High School Student (uncredited)
Production
Development
Grease co-producer Allan Carr had a deal with Paramount Pictures to be paid $5 million to produce a sequel, with production beginning within three years of the original film. Carr decided to hire Patricia Birch as director for the sequel, as she had previously served as the choreographer for the stage and film versions of Grease. Birch was initially hesitant to accept after learning that neither composers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey nor John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John would be involved in the film.[6]Bronte Woodard, the writer who adapted the original stage material for the original film, had died in 1980, and Canadian comic Ken Finkleman (who was also writing and directing Airplane II at the same time) was tasked with penning a new script mostly from scratch. The total budget for the production was $11.2 million, almost double the budget of the original.[7] Birch's approach to the material was to hew closer to the original, grittier stage productions from which Grease came; she had resisted changes made to the original film (largely made at Newton-John's behest) but was overruled.[8]
Grease 2 was intended to be the second film (and first sequel) in a proposed Grease franchise of four films and a television series. (The third and fourth films were to take place in the 1960s and during the counterculture era.) However, the projects were scrapped due to the underwhelming box office performance of Grease 2.[9]Maxwell Caulfield was unhappy with the film's "drab" title, and unsuccessfully lobbied to change it to Son of Grease.[10]
Casting
Birch proposed an idea to feature Travolta and Newton-John reprising their characters as a now married couple running a gas station near the end of the film, with Travolta to sing a new number "Gas Pump Jockey;"[11] this did not come to fruition.[6] Newton John rejected the offer to return, as she was more interested in doing Xanadu.[12] Paramount tried to get Jeff Conaway and Stockard Channing from the first film to do cameos but this did not happen (Channing, by then 37 years old, had left Hollywood for a time in the early 1980s to focus on her stage career).[13] Early plans for Grease 2 had Conaway and Channing's characters, Kenickie and Rizzo, as main characters while they attended summer school,[11] which would have culminated in the two getting married.[8]
Andy Gibb was screen tested to play the male lead but this proved unsatisfactory.[14] At one stage Timothy Hutton was announced as the male lead,[15] and Carr later claimed after Grease 2 was released "Hutton came, sang, and danced in my living room. He had done Guys and Dolls in college, and that’s who I wanted and preferred. But they didn’t consider him sexy enough.”[16]
“They were all in love with Maxwell,” said Patricia Birch. “Stigwood and Allan saw him onstage without his clothes."[18]
Unlike co-star Pfeiffer, Caulfield's career following Grease 2 was damaged by the film's failure. He has been quoted as saying: "Before Grease 2 came out, I was being hailed as the next Richard Gere or John Travolta. However, when Grease 2 flopped, nobody would touch me. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in my face. It took me 10 years to get over Grease 2."[19]
With only a few television roles and small film appearances, Michelle Pfeiffer, then aged 23, was a relatively unknown actress when she attended the casting call audition for the role of Stephanie. Other actresses considered for the part included Lisa Hartman, Kristy McNichol, Andrea McArdle, and singer Pat Benatar.[20] Pfeiffer was a wild card choice, but according to Birch, she won the part because she "has a quirky quality you don't expect."[21] She later commented on being cast:
That was really weird for me. I'd been taking singing lessons and I had taken dance, because I loved to dance, but I had never considered myself a professional at all. I went on this audition as a fluke, and somehow, through the process of going back and dancing, and then going back and singing, I ended up getting the part. I went crazy with that movie. I came to New York and the paparazzi were waiting at the hotel. I know the producers put them up to it. I am basically very private, and I'm really nervous about doing publicity. Every time I set up an interview, I say, "That's it, this is my last one. I'll do this because I committed to doing it, but I'm never doing another one." It was insane.[22]
Adrian Zmed had previously played the role of Danny Zuko in the stage version of Grease, a role he would later reprise in the 1990s.[26]
Filming
Scenes at Rydell High School were filmed at Excelsior High School, a recently closed high school in Norwalk, California.[7] Filming took place throughout a 58-day shooting schedule during the autumn of 1981.[9] According to director Birch, the script was still incomplete when filming commenced.[27] Sequences that were filmed but cut during post-production include scenes in which Frenchy helps Michael become a motorcycle rider, and a sequence at the end of the film showing Michael and Stephanie flying off into the sky on a motorcycle.[28]
In the film, after Stephanie wins the contest, it goes on to show the luau in the final scene. Originally, there were a few minutes dedicated to a scene in which Michael (believed to be dead in his alter ego, by Stephanie) comes out on stage as Stephanie is exiting the stage, unbeknownst to her that he is the cool rider and he is alive. He attempts to ask her what's wrong and she storms past him and runs off crying, then it cuts to the luau. There was a scene within the "Who's that Guy?" number in which Goose accidentally smashes Rhonda's nose at the Bowl-A-Rama door. None of these scenes have been shown since the film's release.
Caulfield said "basically we just got blown off the map by that little movie by Spielberg."[31]
Critical response
As of July 2022[update], on Rotten Tomatoes, the film had an approval rating of 35% based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 4.3/10. The site's consensus read: "Grease 2 is undeniably stocked with solid songs and well-choreographed dance sequences, but there's no getting around the fact that it's a blatant retread of its far more entertaining predecessor."[32] As of October 2020[update], on Metacritic it had a score of 52% based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[33]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times condemned the film as "dizzy and slight, with an even more negligible plot than its predecessor had. This time the story can't even masquerade as an excuse for stringing the songs together. Songs? What songs? The numbers in Grease 2 are so hopelessly insubstantial that the cast is forced to burst into melody about pastimes like bowling."[34]
Variety commended the staging of the musical numbers, writing that Patricia Birch has come up with some unusual settings (a bowling alley, a bomb shelter) for some of the scenes, and employs some sharp montage to give most of the songs and dances a fair amount of punch."[35]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 stars out of 4, saying: "This movie just recycles Grease, without the stars, without the energy, without the freshness and without the grease."[36]
Pfeiffer received positive notices for her first major role. The New York Times review cited her performance as the "one improvement" on the original film: "Miss Pfeiffer is as gorgeous as any cover girl, and she has a sullen quality that's more fitting to a Grease character than Miss Newton-John's sunniness was."[34]Variety wrote that she was "all anyone could ask for in the looks department, and she fills Olivia Newton-John's shoes and tight pants very well."[35] Pfeiffer told the Los Angeles Times three years later:
That film was a good experience for me. It taught me a valuable lesson. Before it even came out the hype had started. Maxwell and I were being thrust down the public's throat in huge full page advertisements. There was no way we could live up to any of that and we didn't. So the crash was very loud. But it did teach me not to have expectations.[37]
Barry Diller of Paramount said that the film "on no level is as good as the first. The quality isn't there."[38]
Jim Jacobs described it at the time as "awful ... the pits."[39] In an interview 27 years later, Jacobs noted that Grease 2 "still brings a brief frown to his face."[40]
Pfeiffer was nominated for a 1983 Young Artist Award in the category of Best Young Motion Picture Actress.
The film was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Picture.[42] Later on, the Stinkers would unveil their picks for the 100 worst films of the 20th century with their "100 Years, 100 Stinkers" list. Grease 2 ranked in the listed bottom 20 at #13.[43][44]
The film was given a special screening at the 2021 online TCM Festival.[citation needed]
In 2003, Olivia Newton-John confirmed that a second sequel was being developed. "They're writing it, and we'll see what happens. If the script looks good, I'll do it. But I haven't seen the script, and it has to be cleverly done."[45] Newton-John died in 2022 before any such script was completed.[46]
In 2008, it was reported that Paramount was planning a new sequel to Grease that would debut straight to DVD.[47] However, the project never came to fruition.
In 2019, it was announced that a prequel to the original film entitled Summer Lovin' with John August attached to write the screenplay was in the works at Paramount.[48]
Stage musical
The film was later adapted into a musical, Cool Rider, with the script re-written and modified for the stage.[49]
Hofler, Robert (2010). Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. ISBN978-0-306-81655-0.
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